Outline

  • Due: Fortnightly from Week 1 Term 2
  • Mark weighting: 40%
  • Template: template repo
  • Submission: submit your assignment according to the instructions below
  • Policies: for late policies, academic integrity policies, etc. see the policies page

Description

The portfolio will be an ongoing assessment item for this course. It’s purpose is to evaluate your ability to critically explore a theme through a series of code art and/or code music which will ultimately evolve into your final project artefact. This is a little bit different to last year, where you produced a single, polished piece of code art/code music. Now this might seem like a lot more work than last year, but the idea is that we don’t want each of the code sketches you produce to be polished. They should be very rough implementations of an idea, just like a pencil-sketch. You will have two weeks worth of class time to work on each new code-sketch (You can certainly use time outside class to work on it too). Part of the work you produce for the portfolio will also be research into defining the scope of your design and analyzing the works of other artist, but the portfolio will predominantly showcase your original attempts at designing digital experiences which address the following theme.

The theme for your project is: echo chambers.

An echo chamber is something which amplifies and reverberates a sound. In the context of digital media, echo chambers are also used to describe the amplification of certain value systems or views; this could either be by amassing information relating to a certain value system/view or it could be by representing alternate values systems or views (i.e. those outside the echo chamber) as untrustworthy. The theme is very much open to your interpretation, but we do ask that your project meets the following requirements:

  • You must select a person or group of people to design your echo chamber for
  • You must identify a value system or a view which the person or group aligns with

Now, we certainly aren’t asking you to get political with this, but we do ask that you pick some value system to design your echo chamber around - preferably, one that you personally find interesting or align with. This could be one relating to a community or hobby you take part in. You could even design an echo chamber for your neighbour, who strongly believes cats are our feline overlords. We won’t explicitly judge your chosen value system/view (or your neighbour for that matter). We care more about how you make decisions and navigate the design process using this value system/view as your north star.

Submission deadlines

Your portfolio submissions will be due fortnightly at 11:59pm on Fridays. The portfolio will consist of 8 portfolio entries and the due dates for each of the 8 portfolio entries are below:

  • Portfolio Submission 1: 28th April (Friday)
  • Portfolio Submission 2: 12th May (Friday)
  • Portfolio Submission 3: 26th May (Friday)
  • Portfolio Submission 4: 9th June (Friday)
  • Portfolio Submission 5: 23rd June (Friday)
  • Portfolio Submission 6: 28th July (Friday)
  • Portfolio Submission 7: 11th Aug (Friday)
  • Portfolio Submission 8: 25th Aug (Friday)

In your template repo, you will find markdown files for each portfolio submission under the subfolder portfolio\. You might not have worked with markdown before, so we will give you plenty of support with this stuff. It’s a lot like writing in any kind of text file (like MS Word, but without all the nice formatting). Here are some resources to help you navigate markdown, but you can also just ask us in class if you have any questions. Besides actually writing, committing and pushing the code to generate sketches which you’ll discuss in your portfolio submission, you will only need to modify the relevant markdown file for your fortnightly portfolio submissions.

Specification

Each portfolio submission should include the following:

  • an outline of your decision making since the last portfolio entry, including the WHAT and the WHY. Your decision making should be discussed in relation to the three dimensions of the marking criteria below, however you do not have to make decisions relating to all three dimensions of the marking criteria each fortnight.
  • a history of git commits related to the changes you made since the last portfolio entry. Make a new commit for each new idea you try and push your code to git regularly.
  • a photo(s) of your work OR any sources of inspiration
  • you can optionally include a video(s) of your work in your entry
  • a plan for what you will explore in your next portfolio submission
  • links to any external code/resources you used. This includes code you have already developed in association with this course through weekly classwork or assessments.

NOTE: Your first portfolio entry is due on the 28th of April. This is the first week back in Term 2. For this reason, you will only be required to discuss 1) potential interpretations of the theme, 2) potential value systems or views you’d like to capture in your design, 3) any external research and/or sources of inspiration you find and 4) your chosen interpretation and value system along with your plans for the next portfolio entry. No code submission is required for the first portfolio entry. However, you can some submit code sketches if you’d like.

The portfolio entries should be in the style of an informal blog. Any photos related to your ideation can be a mixture of hand-drawn sketches and code-sketches (screenshots of your browser window), but we encourage you to get comfortable sketching with code this year. You can even include photos of you interacting with your sketch. You will need to host any videos you want to include on a platform like Vimeo or YouTube (it can be private/unlisted) and share a link to it.

Submission process

You must submit each portfolio entry and the corresponding code by committing and pushing it to GitLab by 11:59pm for each deadline above (you do not need to submit any code for the first portfolio entry). You must push it to your fork of the template repo (the same process we use every week in the labs).

Remember: a markdown file is just a file like all the other files (e.g. .js, .html) you’ve had in your template repository every week. You just need to modify the relevant file and commit, then push it up to GitLab as usual.

Once you’ve done that, it’s a good idea to log into the GitLab web interface and check that it’s been successfully pushed.

NOTE: Your portfolio entries will be hosted on the creative computing course website. All of your portfolio entries will be hidden from public view until the marks are released (about 2 weeks from 25th Aug), so you can go back and modify any old submissions before this date. After this date, the portfolio entries will be made public. If you don’t feel comfortable having your portfolio entry made public, please let me know and I won’t have it listed on the course site.

Marking criteria

The marking criteria are connected to the course learning outcomes (LOs).

Theme/inspo (connected to LO #1 & #4)

  • To what degree have you explored the creative context you are building within? How have you used research and sources of inspiration to explore interpretations of echo chambers and explore the value systems or beliefs you wish to capture in your work.

  • critical discussion of how the “take-home message” of your work is perceived? This could be through your own perspective, through the perspective of someone who shares the value-system or belief you are designing for, or through a person seeing your work in a gallery.

Interaction (LO #1 & #2)

  • to what degree does your decision making effectively consider some form of interaction between the person viewing your work and the work itself? We say some form of interaction because you can implement explicit interactions where a person clicks, types, moves, produces sound which affects your work, OR you can implement implicit interaction where your work is only viewed by the audience member and your sketch somehow manipulates their expectations.

  • do your code sketches implement the most important attributes of the interactive, visual or sonic mechanism you want to explore? Since you are submitting sketches for your portfolio, we care more about your ability to identify (and implement) the most important attributes of the thing you want to implement.

Presentation (LO #2)

  • to what degree does the artistic output (either visuals or sound/music) of your code sketch enhance your interpretation of the theme and to what degree does it detract from your interpretation?

  • do your portfolio entries have—a logical structure, easy-to-follow explanations of your design decisions and their relationship to the theme, including both the what and the why of your design

Note: the mark is for your portfolio entry, not the code itself. However, you must commit and push the code associated with each portfolio entry as well (as stated above) to show us the work that your portfolio entry is based on—if you don’t push the code that will be considered a submission which does not conform to the spec.

FAQ

Coming soon!

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